This is a record of my teaching journey. I am entering my 16th year as an educator. I have taught at risk, post risk, regular ed, and honors. I have taught English, PE, science, math, history, geography, and government. My purpose is to have a place to put my thoughts and have others join the conversation. I am currently located at the Utah Education Network and have the opportunity to work with teachers from all over the great state of Utah as a technology trainer.

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Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Augmented Reality in Education

If you haven't heard of augmented reality, here is a quick video:

When I first downloaded the Aurasma app and pulled out a $20 I thought this was as cool as anything I'd seen. I remember the Harry Potter movies with the moving pictures and thought well now there's an app for that. There was a lot of wow factor with apps like Aurasma, but I didn't really know how to make this work in my class. Sure it was cool, but that's not really a reason to use it in class. There has to be educational value other than the cool factor. I was interested, but I had a lot on my plate and didn't really have time to play around with an app and try to figure out some way to make it educational. The UCET conference was at the start of April and is always a great time for new ideas. I saw a class on the agenda about augmented reality and thought that it was time for me to take a more in depth look at augmented reality and see how other teachers were using it in the class. You can guess that since I'm writing this post that I found what I was looking for.

What I was after was practical application and use of the app. The cool factor makes augmented reality unique, but there has to be educational value in using it. After UCET I did a lot of research on my own and have come up with the following list of ideas. There are two lists one for the school as a whole and one for individual classrooms. This list is by no means comprehensive and I have taken many ideas from other sites and compiled them here. If you have other ways to use augmented reality in the class, feel free to comment to add to the lists.

For the school:
Faculty Pictures: Tag the faculty pictures with teachers introducing themselves. You could have them tell the school what book they are reading among other interesting topics.
How to videos: Create how to videos like opening a locker or how to navigate the lunch line. Set these up at back to school night so that parents and students get to know more about the school.
Library Book Reviews: Create a section in the library where students can find books in which other students have given reviews. This would work as a great way to get rid of the traditional book report and give students an authentic audience to share their book review again and again.
Student of the Month Showcase: Students could record video and tell the student body about their favorite things.
Yearbooks: Parts of the yearbook are brought to life with video from actual events. Remember when the girls volleyball team won the championship? Now you can relive it again and again.
Deaf and hearing impaired: What a great way to have your deaf students express themselves. Lots of possibilities with augmented reality.
Staff Meeting Agendas: Quite a few ideas here, you can tag items on the agenda or have an item on each table with the agenda.
Back to School Night: What a great way to get students/parents excited about school. You could have a scavenger hunt, school tours, how to videos, interesting school facts. Endless amount of options.

For the teacher/student/class:
Word Walls: this is a nice starting point for using A.R. in the class. Take the vocabulary words (this will work in any class, not just English) and have your students make each word into an aura. Great way for your students to learn the vocabulary without realizing they are learning.
Reports: Students research and write a report about a topic they then record some highlights about their topic and make their report much more interactive. You can have your students researching, storyboarding, making a video, doing voice overs, and finally creating an A.R. moment to go with their report. Sometimes projects can drag, but by having it broken into bite size parts and having a carrot at the end of the stick (the A.R.) they will work through the drudgery to get the carrot.
All About Me/Meet the Class: I have seen this assignment in every grade K-12 and with A.R. it can really come to life and add a personal touch you wouldn't get any other way.
Virtual Field Trip: There are so many options with this activity: you could print off pictures of a place and have students create an A.R. for each picture/place, you could link video to each picture that gives background information to preview a book or topic, really you could use this in just about any way you wanted.
Flashcards: I'm not sure there is a more practical way for students to get engaged in studying and learning the material than creating interactive flashcards.
Homework with mini lesson. Teachers make the actual assignment into an A.R. You could give a brief explanation/summarize the assignment and/or show how to do a few of the problems. Students would be able to watch the A.R. over and over until they understood it.
Rubrics embedded on the assignment: You could link the rubric to the assignment and then students would be able to have the rubric with them and view it as many times as needed.
Scavenger Hunt: I loved creating and doing scavenger hunts with my class, especially in the spring when the weather was nice and testing was over. The problem I always had was things got lost throughout the day, misplaced, or even stolen. Being able to tag and object with a clue would be such a great way to have your students complete the scavenger hunt.
Preview material and give extra commentary: You could find places in the text that you want to highlight with either more commentary or give essential background information. This is a great way to have your textbook come to life.